The blurring lines between B2B vs B2C Product Management

Product management roles across different industries, companies size, customer base etc. can be very different and yet very similar. Understanding the nuances of these differences and similarities can go a long way in a product manager’s (PM) career. However, this blog is going to be squarely focused on the B2B vis-a-vis B2C products.  

Having worked in both B2B and B2C companies over the years, I have realized that product management in both these segments is largely similar in terms of prioritization, knowledge and skills. Both sets of PMs will relate to the same product jokes that are circulating around, which means that one can easily succeed in the other and also switch between them.

The lines are blurring between the two, but there are still a few key differences which are critical for PMs to understand.

I have tried to group these differences in 4 major buckets, as explained below -  

1. Few large customers vs many small ones
2. In a B2C company, there are many small customers, sometimes in the range of millions to billions. This means PMs have to build various user personas on the basis of the data available about the users’ demographics, likes and dislikes, usage preferences, etc. All of these personas might not manifest into the target customer base. It takes a lot more effort to narrow them down and build a product that satisfies the needs of the most valuable personas.
3. When it comes to B2B companies, there are only a few customers, each being a large size customer in terms of number of users as well as the money that they might bring in. Typically, the users and buyers are two different personas in this segment. As a PM, it’s important to satisfy both these personas as they are both important to ensure that the customer stays with your product. There’s a lot of effort and money put in bringing each customer which adds a lot of responsibility on PMs to be able to retain them.
4. This difference in the number of customers in B2B vs B2C companies is a huge factor behind the difference in data strategies employed by these companies.
5. Data Strategy
6. Gathering data around customer needs is very important for any company to grow and strive in this competitive landscape that we live in.
7. In B2C companies, user behavior, interaction, clicks etc. plays a huge role for product managers in order to build their roadmaps. Naturally, their reliance on data analytics is massive. Hence, it becomes important to have a great working relationship with the data science teams. But this also means that the direct interaction with the end users is extremely limited for such PMs.
8. User behavior, usage, etc. can help some B2B companies as well, but more often than not, it is difficult to rely a lot on the usage data alone. A more refined perspective about your users can be gathered by regular interactions with the users themselves. However, this can lead to a lot of feature requests from them and managing these feature requests can get really difficult as resources are scarce. Being able to carve out and understand the underlying problem from these requests is an important skill to master for B2B PMs. Hence, conducting structured discussions with customers becomes extremely critical for a PM here so that they are not seen as mere order takers but valued as real problem solvers. This is sometimes a major differentiating factor between successful and struggling PMs in B2B companies.
9. Remember that there are multiple sources of receiving customer requests too. Through the sales teams, direct customer interactions, support teams and even customer success teams. Hence, one other important skill to learn in B2B companies is stakeholder management. Effective communication skills can really be a huge help in managing the stakeholders and this blog talks in depth about that.
10. Beta Testing vs Customer Feedback
11. Along with working on the roadmap, it’s important to get feedback on the features early on. Testing your hypothesis helps in identifying any potential setbacks down the road, saving a lot of time, effort and money. Beta testing is an important method in B2C companies to gather the feedback and test out the low fidelity prototypes at the most valuable product (MVP) level. However, Beta testing helps only for the features where you have huge users inflow, for example, login flow, signup flow, home page optimization, etc. But it is important to not get carried away with this data alone. There are a few other ways to gather the user feedback as well, especially for features where beta testing cannot produce convincing results.
12. If you want a 360° feedback on your functionalities early on, it’s important to work real time with the customer success teams as they have first-hand understanding of what the customers like or dislike, spend time understanding these complaints and problems, and focus on the pain points to update your roadmap accordingly.
13. When it comes to B2B companies, direct customer interactions by conducting user/buyer interviews is one of the most important methods to get the user experience (UX) feedback early on and updating your product designs to cover the use-cases demanded by the most customers. Even after a feature is released, listening to your customer needs is as important to ensure that you are only enhancing features that are most valuable to your users. However, in the midst of all this, remember not to be overpowered by some specific group of users who might be paying more money than other users. As a PM, the final decision making has to be yours and it has to be well analyzed and should meet the overall customer expectations vis-a-vis expectations of some specific customers or users.
14. Go-To-Market Strategy
15. As a PM, you have put a lot of effort in your data strategy, roadmap finalization, early hypothesis testing and now your product is ready. Now what? Go-to-market strategy is a critical element for your product’s success and is the hardest to achieve for any product.
16. For B2C companies, targeted communications through successful social media campaigns on facebook, youtube, via blogs, etc. is one of the most cost effective ways to communicate about your new product or new product enhancement to the users. TV commercials or infomercials are another costly but effective way to create awareness about your new product (features). Even if it falls under the purview of marketing teams, it is important to work with them to bring overall synchronization in the go-to-market plans and ensure that the selling features are marketed effectively based on the user personas you are trying to attract to your product.
17. For B2B products, it is true that they have become more consumerized especially over the last couple of years. Slack & Zoom are a great example of this. But even if so, go-to-market strategy is still a little different in B2B companies. Continuous customer communications (direct or via sales/customer success teams) is one of the most effective methods to keep customers adept at the new changes. For any new product release or a major product update, B2B companies can release them at the annual customer events which are attended by all the existing as well as potential new customers. Moreover, rather than forcing the existing users to adapt to the new features, it is important to make them optional & settings driven to cater to all the users without any disruptions. To complement these releases, product trials via ‘Freemium’ offering can also be used to attract new users to your product or upsell your product to the existing users.

As they say - “the customer is always right”. Be it B2B or B2C, despite of all the differences listed above, understanding your end customer remains the single most important thing that is common between the two PM roles.

About the Author:

Dhara Babaria is an experienced product manager and passionate about the fintech and healthtech industry. She wants to utilize her technological expertise to modernize the healthcare technology space and build powerful products to help people.

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